


Imin, Tata, Enel.

by Zimraphel



Series: tolkien ficlets [5]
Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-22
Updated: 2020-12-22
Packaged: 2021-03-11 05:40:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28250022
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Zimraphel/pseuds/Zimraphel
Summary: prehistoric elves!Cuivienyarna is an elvish fairytale; but the idea of immortal prehistoric elves is fainty horrifying if you take it a strange non-aging species that did change (somehow) slowly into what is later recogised as 'an elf.'A drabble on the Unbegotten.
Series: tolkien ficlets [5]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2042965
Comments: 4
Kudos: 23





	Imin, Tata, Enel.

They call us Unbegotten.

Truth is we are merely so old no we no longer remember beginning. Worse; we lay beneath the stars long before the Speakers were the Speakers, gazing up among the animals in mute adoration. When world was silent and sensed more than seen, we were, and for a long time nothing changed. Starlight, water, silence. Not even birds yet started to sing, still all scales and claws. Strange flowers bloomed like faint lightening beneath dark vaults of moonless blue, beneath great white mushrooms tall as trees. Unrecogniseable life crawling over the crust of the earth, still congealing. The world before the world; when dragons were yet simple beasts without fire, and thought a passing shadow. Even the bones of that world's mountains are buried deep now, no tale of it told, nor will it ever be. None who saw it could ever speak of it, and some I saw were never recognised as of us, later on, when we started to decide who we were.

But we lived; and we lived a long time. Hands on the cave-wall, red and black. Without words almost impossible to remember whose, only the memory of movement--hunting and dancing, holding, hurting; shapes flood; boundaries blur. Meaning not so easily attached. Names we had not, then; mother I knew not, or if I did, I have long forgotten who was one to me when we did not have the word to call one by. It may be that my mother became my wife. I do not know now. I only knew her when I named her, and what happened before we spoke was left in the dark forever.

We did not step into that new day. A great Tale was starting, and we were from a world before storied song, when all sound was wordless keening. Nor were some so sure it was indeed they who were asked to ascend; furred arms and larger eyes falling out of fashion, unfavored by these new gods.

There they go; bright Elwë and dark, careful Finwë, whose eyes few things escape. Golden Indis, who dances the song, and Míriel the weaver, who ties all ends together, then cuts the thread. Soft veils before the eyes of those who come from the high holy mountain, for what they saw cannot be unseen, their eyes in flames; they frighten the young, whose beloved stars were never so near to them.

One, two three. What little that remains of not-beginning now ordered a new way, sequenced and sorted the many-shaped world. No doubt we are a story in our own right; but not one we will learn how to sing; too much has passed without words to fit into these new ways. We are to remain here, where words are few and light is far, where shapes remain strange and many -- by this lake from which there is no true returning, until the river runs dry and the stars go out at last.

And when the dark at last returns like nameless memory to erase every sharp corner you ever cut yourselves on--

We will be waiting to welcome you home, whatever shape you may wish to take.


End file.
